Windows network domain

Windows™ network technology enables you to create network domains. A domain is a group of connected Windows computers that share user account information and a security policy.

A domain controller manages the user account information for all domain members. The domain controller facilitates network administration. By managing one account list for all domain members, the domain controller relieves the network administrator of the requirement to synchronize the account lists on each of the domain computers. In other words, the network administrator who creates or changes a user account must update only the account list on the domain controller rather than the account lists on each of the computers in the domain.

To log in to a Windows database server, a user on another Windows computer must belong to either the same domain or a trusted domain. A trusted domain is one that establishes a trust relationship with another domain. In a trust relationship, user accounts are only in the trusted domain.

If you specify a user identifier but no domain name for a connection to a workstation that expects both a domain name and a user name (domain\user), the database server checks only the local workstation and the primary domain for the user account. If you explicitly specify a domain name, that domain is used to search for the user account. The attempted connection fails with error -951 if no matching domain\user account is found on the local workstation.

Use the CHECKALLDOMAINSFORUSER configuration parameter to configure how the database server searches for user names in a networked Windows environment.